Well said. That's where Android is such a unique player in the mobile arena; the very fact that it is open allows anyone to take it and make it their own.

However, I personally feel that Google should lighten up a bit when it comes to their branded apps. Perhaps they should allow at least the search widget, maps and Gmail without restrictions.

The market is another story; I can see why they wouldn't want just any device to have access. For example, I just switched from BlackBerry to Android yesterday via the Motorola Cliq, a version 1.5 device. I chose that phone because I like the hardware, MotoBlur is fun, and Motorola has committed to a 2.1 upgrade soon (it's in the testing phase now). Regarding the Market, I have twice now installed an app that gave no warning about compatible OS versions, but when I try to run it, it says "This app is compatible with 2.x and above". One app simply closes immediately, the other falls back to a native OS app and only provides codecs (it's a video player).

To me, the above situation is just silly. This is one area where Apple's strict control over their app store is a good thing; no worries about which version of iOS a user has installed. Now, that doesn't mean I think Google should ban the Market from a non-blessed device; rather, I think they need to put more work into the Market itself to ensure that no incompatible apps show up on a particular device.

I know Android can be a techie's dream device, and techies tend to research apps and make sure they only install what works. However, Android is now a mainstream mobile OS and has more non-techie users by far today. These are the folks who will think their device or its OS is "broken" if it refuses to run apps. I know this for a fact as my co-worker has been very frustrated with her Droid Eris over unstable and non-functioning apps and has exchanged it twice. I tried to explain to her recently that there is an update to 2.1 that might fix those issues, but she is very hesitant to update the device and is instead waiting for a device upgrade on her contract.

I think over time Google will see these issues and work to correct them. They have far too much invested in Android at this point to ignore their huge customer base.